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I would say Quake 1 has generally aged better (if only for the fact that Quake 2 uses those laughably primitive polygon-based explosions instead of more detailed sprite animations). Q2 has a funny kind of problem though in that the texture quality by default on more modern hardware actually looks worse than it did back in the day. I think it was some kind of bug related to non-Glide 3D acceleration which sets the texture quality to low. If you play in software mode the textures actually look a good deal sharper. I found out about this around last year or so, and I always had this gut feeling that the game looked significantly worse texture-wise than I remembered it being.

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Q2 has a funny kind of problem though in that the texture quality by default on more modern hardware actually looks worse than it did back in the day. I think it was some kind of bug related to non-Glide 3D acceleration which sets the texture quality to low. If you play in software mode the textures actually look a good deal sharper.

It seems that you're talking about the model skins being resized by default. That's exactly how it was supposed to work on old accelerators due to the fact that they didn't support textures with non-power-of-two dimensions. Software mode isn't as restrictive.

The engine is capable of using the skins at their native resolutions in OpenGL, but the option is only present as a console command (unless you install the unofficial patch).

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Hard to answer objectively because I play Quake via QuakeSpasm (or sometimes DarkPlaces) which upgrade the graphics a lot. Also modern Quake 1 maps are truly spectacular graphical achievements. From memory (I haven't played Quake 2 in a long time) it suffers a bit from "christmas tree" coloured lighting syndrome.

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I would say Quake 1 has generally aged better (if only for the fact that Quake 2 uses those laughably primitive polygon-based explosions instead of more detailed sprite animations). Q2 has a funny kind of problem though in that the texture quality by default on more modern hardware actually looks worse than it did back in the day. I think it was some kind of bug related to non-Glide 3D acceleration which sets the texture quality to low. If you play in software mode the textures actually look a good deal sharper. I found out about this around last year or so, and I always had this gut feeling that the game looked significantly worse texture-wise than I remembered it being.

Q2 explosions > Q1 explosions

I love the Q2 explosions and unequivocally believe every game whose engine is capable of displaying them properly should utilize polygon explosions.

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Quake II is definitely uglier, outside of native hardware support and the colored lighting the game is seriously lackluster on effects. It's like id decided all they needed was more particles for things like flies and sparking machinery (the blood wasn't new) and just called it a day and let the colored lighting do the rest. Compared to say HL the year next which had all kinds of cool effects and it did it on a modified Q1 engine.

I went through Q2 recently after having not played it since 2011 (which I got close to the end via KMQuake II and didn't finish for some reason) and was surprised at how bad the game aged and also how friggin' boring it is to play. Huh, that's probably why I didn't finish the game last time. Q1 by comparison is way, way better and I can easily see why now I've gravitated toward it more than Q2 in recent years, which may as well be another game entirely. Should've just went with what Steed wanted, stupid marketing.

Also the power armor is OP, once you've got it you're unstoppable even on hard, all the weapons are way too powerful (except the blaster and regular shotgun which are useless and he can't throw grenades for shit) and all the enemies are too easily exploitable with slow melee attacks cancelling out their projectile or pain chances that must of been set to 255 on average, most noticeable with the super shotgun.

I liked The Reckoning for some reason even though it was more of the same, it had cool new weapons. I've been trying to get through Ground Zero but have gone on a hiatus as it's been a fucking headache with the new enemies, the laser and rocket turrets and medic commanders can go to hell. Also all the new weapons suck and are really underpowered. Come to think of it, the reason I've been having such a hard time with Ground Zero is because I haven't found any power armor! Great game balance assholes.

Yeah, I don't like Q2 very much anymore, it kinda sucks, the Strogg are still a cool concept, even if it is just a glorified loveletter to the Borg and the Terminator.

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One of the biggest flaws in Quake 2 are the sound effects, some of the weapons sound terrible, mostly the shotgun, the machinegun, the chaingun and the hyperblaster, I can't really enjoy the game these days without modified sounds.

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It seems like the sound design was just a patchwork of leftovers from Reznor and Romero's work on Quake 1. The shotgun sounds bad because it's actually the nailgun sound with a reload thrown on top of it.

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Also quite the contrary on 'rainbow colors', Q2 is extremely orange and brown. And another issue I have with it is that they played the design too safe; if you've seen one unit in this game you've seen the other eight. Way too many techbases.

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Also quite the contrary on 'rainbow colors', Q2 is extremely orange and brown. And another issue I have with it is that they played the design too safe; if you've seen one unit in this game you've seen the other eight. Way too many techbases.

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Quake 2, it sucked back then and it sucks forever!
Q2 is the uglier, the weapon sounds are bad, not to mention they feel so underpowered, like, to kill a Strogg Chaingunner you gotta fire like 3 or 4 sg shots, man that's ridiclous, the weapon balance overrall is bad, the music however is badass and i love it, but still, it falls to its knees at Quake's superiority.

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It's strange how seemingly all first person shooters got exceedingly bullet spongy after the switch to polygonal 3D in the late 90's. It was one of the main things I disliked about Half-Life. Unreal also had this problem.

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Anyway my choice is unequivocally Quake 2. It's nothing to do with the art assets or the color scheme, though, I don't have a problem with that. It's everything to do with the engine -- its model animations are just so... squishy. Straight lines don't stay straight, and the polygons move around in ways that don't look right. It's most noticeable on the super shotgun.

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It's strange how seemingly all first person shooters got exceedingly bullet spongy after the switch to polygonal 3D in the late 90's. It was one of the main things I disliked about Half-Life. Unreal also had this problem.

I don't think it's very strange at all. When true 3D engines were developed (Q1), computers weren't capable of displaying all that architecture AND a horde of polygonal enemies. To compensate for this, and maintain the degree of challenge, some fundamental changes became necessary. Primarily, enemies that dealt more damage and had more health than their sprite-based counterparts.

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Quake 2 hasn't aged well. The model detail and artwork hadn't caught up with the rendering and everything is dull and mushy looking. I still have a soft spot for the game, but given the choice, I'll pick Quake 1 every time. I played Quake 2 not long ago on a WinXP machine, and the gun textures on screen all looked wobbly as they moved, like they weren't being held together. I don't recall this being as pronounced. Any idea what that was about?

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Quake 2 hasn't aged well. The model detail and artwork hadn't caught up with the rendering and everything is dull and mushy looking. I still have a soft spot for the game, but given the choice, I'll pick Quake 1 every time. I played Quake 2 not long ago on a WinXP machine, and the gun textures on screen all looked wobbly as they moved, like they weren't being held together. I don't recall this being as pronounced. Any idea what that was about?

It's not the textures, it's the models themselves. They were animated by hand (moving individual vertices) on a frame by frame basis, so up close the models seem to warp and wobble somewhat.